Freeware Roguelike ‘Pixel Dungeon’ Has Gone Open Source

Pixel art, roguelike, open source, lots of monsters to kill – what’s not to like about Pixel Dungeon? Well alright, some may dislike that it’s an Android exclusive, but aside from that. Can’t argue with its price tag though, and the game is certainly packed with content. It’s also pretty difficult, so… good luck – you’re gonna need it.

Your main objective, which is to acquire the Amulet of Yendor, requires traversing 25 increasingly challenging levels, including the likes of sewers and caves. Plenty of combat too, along with a fair amount of exploration, all of which is handled through an intuitive touch interface. Heck, you can even drag the viewable area and pinch-zoom for a better fit on your particular device. But enough about the game – this is about the source, the whole source and (almost) nothing but the source.

Pixel Dungeon is absolutely free, no ads, no pay-to-unlock features. I’m making this game for fun and I’m not going to monetize it.

Distributed under the GPLv3 license, Pixel Dungeon’s code, graphics and audio can now be acquired from GitHub. According to the developer in this forum post, “the style is too far from perfect, but it works :)”, which should be more than enough to get aspiring Android developers started, if nothing else.

Note: while the game (and source, of course) is free, its creator did put a donation button on the website (and in-game), should playing Pixel Dungeon put you in a generous mood.

Pixel Dungeon is available from Google Play, for devices running Android 2.2 or later.